ARE Israeli voters prepared to elect as prime minister a former general who has repeatedly lied to his colleagues and to the public, someone who will likely go off half-cocked – lacking the support of his government – in order to unilaterally push extremist policies to which a majority of Israelis are vehemently opposed?

They will if they re-elect Ehud Barak.

You thought we were talking about Ariel Sharon? Obviously, you’ve been spending too much time watching CNN.

How ironic that the traits which the news media delight in ascribing to Sharon fit the current prime minister to a tee. For it is Barak who is rushing pell-mell into an agreement with Yasser Arafat – an agreement whose sole legitimate political objective is the re-election of Barak himself.

Moreover, Barak is making this headlong leap into the unknown with the support of barely a third of the Israeli parliament – and in the face of warnings even by some of Israel’s most head-in-the-clouds leftist utopians that he’s endangering the nation’s security by conceding too much.

As Barak plunges ahead, desperately trying to forge an agreement before he faces the voters – and before his strongest supporter, Bill Clinton, leaves office – he does so despite his own insistence that he would refuse to move forward while Israel remained literally under the gun of Palestinian violence.

By going back on his word, Barak has sent Arafat and the Palestinians a dangerous message: There are no red lines that he cannot and will not cross. For Barak, anything and everything is negotiable.

For some, that’s an admirable sign of flexibility. For others, it’s a prescription for diplomatic extortion. If Barak keeps moving his diplomatic lines in the sand, why should Arafat stop crossing them?

And yet it’s Ariel Sharon who gets painted as a dangerous extremist, someone whose mere presence in the centers of power – let alone as prime minister – would inevitably lead to the eruption of all-out regional war.

Those on the left and in the media who cling to such nonsense don’t know Sharon the man. And they refuse to judge him honestly.

Which is why “news” stories emanating from Israel have once again begun referring to Sharon as “the butcher of Beirut.” And each dispatch mentioning his name invariably contains a sentence rehashing the 1982 Lebanon war – inevitably a “disastrous” conflict of which Sharon was the “architect” – and reminding readers that Sharon “is reviled by most Palestinians.”

Of course, it could more accurately be written that Yasser Arafat is “reviled by most Israelis and supporters of Israel,” having been the “architect” of such bloody episodes as the massacre of schoolchildren at Maalot, the murder of Jewish athletes at Munich, the kidnapping and killing of American diplomats in Sudan and the brutal death of Leon Klinghoffer aboard the Achille Lauro – as well as dozens of other such episodes.

But you won’t read or hear that description in any profiles of Arafat.

No, it’s Sharon who is vilified and demonized – as part of a campaign to convince Israelis that they face diplomatic isolation if they unwisely choose him as their prime minister in these profoundly troubling times.

And this campaign is not limited to the news media. Last week, German Bundestag President Wolfgang Thierse warned the Jerusalem Post that “in Germany, we are very concerned about Sharon, and the consequences of what may happen if he takes power.”

As the Feb. 6 election draws closer, expect to see more of the same from other European capitals. And don’t be surprised to hear similar sentiments from Clinton – who will then be a private citizen and has never shown any reluctance to interfere in Israel’s domestic politics.

The truth, of course, is that Sharon is a man of peace – but of genuine peace, one that protects Israel’s security. He helped draw up and enforce the terms of Israel’s first peace treaty, with Egypt, back in 1978. And he’s prepared to negotiate peace with the Palestinians.

But Sharon, unlike Barak, means to reorder the negotiating priorities – away from talk of how much territory Israel is prepared to surrender and in favor of discussion on how much peace, and what kind, the Palestinians are prepared to guarantee in return.

“For me, peace is not just for a short period of time, but a peace for generations,” Sharon told the Jerusalem Post. “The people of Israel deserve this.”

Indeed, they do. Again unlike Barak, Sharon looks to the future, to the long-term security of the state to which he has devoted so much in order to build and strengthen it. Barak may say he is practicing political pragmatism, but Sharon believes in the politics of realism.

That means a peace that can survive the next election. Which means that Ariel Sharon is prepared to tell Arafat what Ehud Barak won’t: There’s a real limit to what Israel is prepared to concede. And he’ll mean it.